Recurring Pneumonia/Spots on CT-HELP!
babysmaid
17 years ago
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lindac
16 years agoRelated Discussions
Cancer Treatment: Helpful or Harmful?
Comments (9)chenyu, you are a very insightfull person. I am not a cancer survivor and hope that I never have to experience the disease. But as a person who at the ripe age of 24 had to care for her grandmother (who was only 57) when she lost her second battle with the disease I want to give you another side. Nothing I am saying is meant to offend you just offer a little to your statements. I agree that it is important to strengthen the bodys immune system. I also agree that chemotherapy is not a selective treatment. It does not know the difference between healthy cells and cancerous cells and it makes you sick. Many times my grandma said she didnt know what was worse, the treatment or the cure. But doctors are learning how to pinpoint both chemo and radiation to protect the healthy cells. I do not agree that treatment is a blind experiment. While most all treatments may start out that way (or even as an accident) we learn and add to what is learned. There are some cancers that can be cured in some patients with no reaccurance. You stated that treatment cant prolong a patients life and excelerates their death. I have to disagree and I feel I have to give a summery of my experiance with my grandmother for you to understand what I am saying. Sorry if this gets long. My grandmother got her first tumor at around 35. It was benign. When another formed 10 years later she thought nothing of it. Unfortunitly, she also didnt go to the doctor till it started to bother her (about 6 months after she noticed the tumor coming back. That time it was malignent. Her cancer was sarcoma. It is a hard tissue tumor that is like bone. They did chemo to shrink the tumor and then removed it. Along with most of the bone in her arm and shoulder (It had grown into her bones and could not be seperated. That was replaced with rods and "hinges". She had 13 other small tumors that were inactive. They could only keep an eye on to see if they started growing. She was not a sickly person before the cancer or after. Cancer was the only thing she ever suffered from. When 2 of the remaining tumors started growing they could not be removed because of location (one behind each lung). She went through radiation that was designed to zero in on the tumor and protect the surrounding tissue and cells. Unfortunitly this time the sarcoma was growing so fast that they could not keep it contained. Her second battle with the disease lasted 2 years. If they could have removed those tumors she would have survived. The cancer is not what caused her death in the end, it was the inability to breath because of the compression on her lungs. If my grandmother had not had medical treatment for the 2nd tumor and had it removed she would have died within 6 months due to the aggresive growth of the tumor. Yes, the cancer got her in the end but she also got another 10 years of life and got to enjoy her first grandaughter before she got sick. So treatment did prolong her life not accelerate her death. Even if she were to stay in a protected environment free from polution (with no treatment) she would have died in 6 months, not 10 years. I believe an open mind is crucial in fighting any disease. And while I feel those that rely on doctors should be openminded about "natural" remedies, I also feel that those who rely on "natural" remedies should use that same openmindedness in regards to "medical" remedies. Each has their stronger points. Carey...See MoreOliver's sale and mid-season 'Get-together'
Comments (39)Well, not all came as planned, but still some brave souls show up and took a brief stroll along the garden (and many unplanted pots, LOL). I'm pretty much sure that people at Oliver are very disappointed with their attendance, but for us it was a great opportunity to find some bargains without being overruned by another 'hungry' gardener. I ended up with hydrangeas 'Nightingale'(Nachtigalle) and 'Preziosa' (another one, how many do I need?), two Rhododendron macronulatum 'Nana', Rh. kiusianum 'Alba' (my 3rd), buddleia 'Honeycomb' and ....(drums, please)...4x4' Acer palmatum 'Hanami Nishiki', one that have probably the tiniest leaves of all dwarf jap maples. Virginia also bought hydrangea, jap.maple and some dwarf blue conifer (name escapes me). Hedy become a proud owner of several maples, hydrangeas and weeping styrax plus something else. Overall, I'd call it a good hunt. I don't know about rescheduling the party later in a summer since I'll have a lot of long-term stay family visitors this year, but always open for garden tours on individual or small group basis....See MoreRollcall (continuation of terryr's 'It's quiet....')
Comments (41)Terry Wait until you are committed! If, you are dedicated to enjoying this wonderful planet and putting back more than you take out so that you help insure that something is left for the future, do NOT wait. Fill out the form honestly and completely, and see if you qualify.??? Do you provide food for some form of wildlife? Do you have a birdbath, pond, fountain, or some other way to provide water? Do you have some cover to provide escape from preditors? Do you provide a place to raise young? I have some large "driftwood" logs for the large carpenter bees to nest. Some undisturbed vegetation is good for beneficial insects. Flowers provide pollen and nectar, and later seeds. Tiny birds love the hollyhock seeds. Every habitat has a beginning. Keep up the good work! Verena You speak of geese. Late this afternoon I looked up and HIGH in the sky was very large V! It came from the southeast and crossed over me to the northwest. Maybe coming from over Mexico and heading for BC? They were too high for me to hear the noise. Here and there one would drop back and veer over to take a "higher" spot in the social order. Msrpaul I have no experience with the killer bees yet either, but they are here too. Navymom2226 Happy summer to you too!...See MoreAnother thing you can get from ticks: Anaplasmosis
Comments (18)To all who have wished me a speedy recovery: Thank You! I am feeling steadily better (1 month out), and expect to be back to full strength shortly. @Alisande, If you think you may have babeseosis at the moment, then insist on being tested. Same with anaplasmosis, both are less-difficult than Lyme to diagnose from blood smears, I believe. (The issue with the blood supply, aside from the traditional head-in-the-sand attitude of the blood industry, and of course the cost, is that there is no rapid-enough test for babeseosis -or possibly the other tick-borne diseases -to work with the need for fresh blood.) But as I mentioned, anaplasmosis has distinct, characteristic, changes in routine blood work that are almost diagnostic. I can check next time I am in the medical library if there are specific changes in the case of babeseosis. I may have that info for erlichiosis, if you'd like to know it. Anaplasmosis has distinctive mullberry shaped artifacts (morullae) in the disease-specific blood smears (as does erlichiosis, I believe). Babeseosis is different but unless you, like I, have had malaria it's pretty distinctive in the blood test for it. The tests aren't inexpensive (the unadjusted street price for them is $500-$1,000 -each- but my insurance company whacked both of them down considerably. Since you're on Medicare, you'd only pay a percentage of the CMS-negotiated cost which is likely to be as aggressively moderated as that of my own insurance company's contractual rate. Since all three are bacterial, not spirochete, -caused it doesn't require the complex analysis of PCR bands that Lyme does. But frankly if I was on my second continuous month of Lyme I would have pretty awful constitutional symptoms from that lengthy treatment alone. I can barely make it out the 30 days of a single course before I have disturbed sleep, night sweats, muscle aches and pains, etc. Part of my fierceness about discovering ticks early is to avoid the need for the lengthy course of anti-Lyme doxy. Since doxy won't really do anything for babeseosis - and other drugs will - why keep taking what may be the wrong cure? I don't think you would experience symptoms from babeseosis or anaplasmosis (or even Lyme) infection before locating the tick. The incubation time needed to get sick from a still-attached tick would have resulted in a deer tick as big as a green pea, a nasty pearly-grey tight blob. It's hard to imagine you wouldn't have noticed it well before getting sick if it was still attached. Don't you itch like mad when you have a tick attached for more than a few hours, not to mention days? I'd be wild! BTW, the tick-hours-of-bite measurement has a built in problem: the aging relies on analysis of stomach digestive contents. But that assumes, and it is not always true, that the bite the tick was discovered making is the only bite, not a second one. Also you mentioned you squashed the critter in removing it. You might want to consider beginning more intensive searches for ticks on your body twice a day in order to not miss one. I have hair so long I can sit on it so I do realize it can be hard to check your scalp and hair. I have also found attached ticks under my breasts, in my belly button, on various unmentionable parts of my bottom, and even larval ones between my toes and fingers. I usually keep my long hair tied up in pigtail outdoors. I tuck the pigtail down the back of my shirt to minimize the likelihood of ticks getting caught in my hair. Of course I always have a hat on outside for sun protection, so my head and scalp are less-common tick areas. I do tick-checks at least twice every day of the year, unless I am away from home overnight in the city. It's just like brushing your teeth. I'm not convinced that Lyme "lurks in your body" but given that it is caused by spirochete I suppose it's possible. (Another spirochete-caused illness, syphillis, has a proven habit of lingering on and re-occurring, often despite treatment.) I know, for certain, that I have had Lyme (from clearly positive blood tests), been treated successfuly and subsequently had lengthy periods of profound physiological, and mental stress, without Lyme popping back up and adding to the problems. And I still have one band for Lyme on the latest PCR, which indicates an old, resolved infection, so there's no question it's still visible in my blood, but not thankfully making a pest of itself. I also still have serological evidence of malaria in my blood and I haven't had any illness from it in more than fifty years! But the bacterial diseases (anaplasmosis, babeseosis and erlichiosis) seem extremely unlikely lurkers and later-pouncers, especially if treated. What I definitely think they can do, however, is damage other organs and systems resulting in consequential, long-term problems (like the poor fellow described above who lost his spleen as a result of a babeseosis infection.) Your description of high fevers, muscle aches and pains, etc., sound much more like anaplasmosis than Lyme. Did you have any "regular" blood tests done at the time? The average time from bite to onset of symptoms with anaplasmosis is 8 days. I could look that time up for erlichiosis and babseosis, if needed. I don't know enough about Fibro, but aren't night sweats and aches and pains part of that, too? You may not need to go to any doctor more specialized than your primary care doc to check for the bacterial tick-borne illnesses. And then you'll be able to know, and treat, any that are there. I didn't get any hint that the tests for them lead to confusing, or contradictory results, as I know the Lyme test can, because it is a different, and more complicated test.. If you test negative for them, including having normal routine blood results, you can cross them off your list of worries and look elsewhere. (And get off the wretched doxy!) HTH, L....See Morelindac
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